What Time Does America Start Work?

Have you ever wondered how much America cities differ when it comes to work start times? The answer is quite a lot.

In fact there’s an hour and a half difference in the median arrival time between the earliest and latest risers.

Nate Silver from fivethirtyeight.com has used data collected by the US Census Bureau, via the American Community Survey, to find out the median time Americans start their working day in each metropolitan area.

Early Risers

The 20 metropolitan areas with earliest arrival times are shown on the chart below:

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Hinesville, Georgia is the city where the median employee arrives at their place of work the earlier. By 7.01am half of Hineville’s workforce have started their day

There’s a strong military presence in Hinesville (the home of Fort Stewart) which will account for a large number of the earliest starters. In fact many of the early starting metropolitan areas have large number of people employed in the military.

Late Starters

This next chart shows the 20 metropolitan areas with the latest median arrival times:

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New York City is the king of the lie in. The average worker doesn't start work until 8.24am here.

Silver notes that the cities with the latest median start times can be broken down into three broad categories:

1) Cities with a large number of creative young professionals (e.g. New York, Boston, San Francisco.)